Really, these are similar metrics to what you would use to choose systems- except they’re often on the tail end of a choice made years ago. I frequently see multiple systems run in parallel that really should be integrated (e.g., why would one have separate time and access cards?). If you’re going to choose between […]
Month: March 2018
Assessing risk (and pitfalls)
I’ve already mused a bit on project estimation, and I have an upcoming post about how to think about sunsetting systems. It occurs to me that there are at least two more fundamental questions to address: what does it mean to talk about the risk in a system, and what biases might we have when […]
Algorithms that are 80% good aren’t scary.
Leaving aside the difference between sensitivity and specificity: if people know the machine is sometimes wrong, it’s not so bad. Things get scary when the machine is 99% or 99.9% accurate, and you’re caught on the wrong end of a presumption. I’ve often wondered, for example, how many people get picked up on warrants for […]
Vexing little bugs
I find that, particularly with geek stuff, I get hung up on tiny little details. For example, I did a deep dive with Javascript and CSS the other week, trying to find out why I couldn’t get an input field to select all the text inside when I clicked on it. This ties back to […]
2018 Law license reciprocity update
It’s been awhile since I blogged about the UBE and Kansas. I was surprised that Kansas took an extra couple years to join, and even more surprised at the adoption in the northeast. I had always assumed that jurisdictions such as California, Florida, Texas, and New York would maintain their own licensing regimes- but New […]
On project estimation
This may or may not be a series, but I wanted to dash off a few thoughts. I have a feeling this post will come across as very stream-of-consciousness but will be clarified by followup posts. The essence of estimating projects is to evaluate two things: How long is it expected to take? What risks […]
Controversy and Conversation
For (I think) the first time on this blog, I’ve made a post password-protected. I don’t really want to make that a regular habit, but the subject matter is sufficiently nuanced and potentially controversial that I wanted to let a few trusted folks review it before I made my position globally visible. Fundamentally, this issue […]
Protected: On crime statistics
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.